(light, soothing music)

Look out.

Over there.

It's the 1998 American Godzilla movie.

Aw, the screenplay, it's terrifyingly bad.

Oh, I cannot bear to watch it lay waste

to my favorite film franchise.

Oh, curse you, director Roland Emmerich.

Wait, what is this?

Another American adaptation of Godzilla approaches?

Can this new film atone for the devastation

that has come before or will it too reduce

the skyline of my heart to rubble?

The makers of the new Godzilla film

are taking great pains to telegraph

to nerds that they have deep reverence

for kaiju cinema.

If you alienate the nerds, how will you ever get

normal people to watch your giant monster movie?

Pacific Rim did a great job of this,

priming the pump before release with

fake news footage, fake commercials

for black market kaiju organ dealers.

Look for the kaiju symbol at

your local black market today.

Even blueprints of the giant botsit Battle the Kaiju.

Virality factor, eleventy hundred.

The new Godzilla flick did an elaborate

installation at Comic Con that simulated

a kaiju attack on a Japanese city,

and it featured iconic props from the original film.

The new trailer seems to say that this movie

won't completely junk the classic character

design like the 1998 version did.

Argh, let us never speak of it again.

The new one even has those classic serrated fins,

but the best part of the new movie is the roar.

The filmmakers uploaded their new version

to Soundcloud so we could savor how it honored

the spirit of the original.

Just listen and compare.

The classic, and now the new version.

Huh?

Oh,

excuse me.

My ringtone now.

Mom, I will call you back.

Most importantly, the buildup for this new film

suggests that its makers realize that the original

Godzilla wasn't supposed to be campy.

Their monster was a man in a rubber suit

because they had very little money,

not because they wanted the audience to chuckle.

The 1954 film was intended to be a harrowing

experience that summoned up memories of the

all-too-real death and devastation of World War II.

Truly, the Godzilla films teach us that the most

horrible and destructive monster of them all

is Mecha-King Ghidorah, the three headed

cyborg space dragon.

What?

I dare you to disagree.

What's your favorite Godzilla villain,

besides Roland Emmerich?

Let me know in the comments, and subscribe

to The Wired channel.

(quiet symphony music)